language

I used to believe…

When I was younger (8 or 9), I used to believe that only people who spoke English could write songs or poetry because when you translated the English words into any other language they didn't rhyme anymore.

I used to believe…

When I started teaching second grade, I was dismayed when a student told on another student for swearing. Apparently he had used the "S word" and even the "S-H word" in front of her. I thought, "What is this country coming to, that 7 year olds use these words?" Later I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the "S word" is Stupid, and the "S-H" word is Shut Up. I love that they think these are terrible words!

I used to believe…

When I was very little, instead of singing "W, X, Y, and Z" I would sing, "W, X, Y, N, Z" It wasn't until I was learing to print the alphabet that I learned that there were not, in fact, two N's in the alphabet. Now that I have kids I try very hard to leave out the "and" when I sing the ABC's. Really, I think a pause is sufficient, don't you? OH, and while were on the subject, it wasn't until I was an adult that I realized that the ABC's, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and Baa Baa Black Sheep were all set to the same tune.

I remember somebody telling me that the C-word was "cent" as in the American coin.
I didn't understand how the Americans could get away with swearing all the time.

I used to believe…

When I was about 6, I was very innocent, and when a girl rushed into the classroom shouting "I KNOW THE F-WORD!" we were all desperate to know what this mythical, legendary word could be. "YEAH IT'S FURT" she shouted. We were very shocked. Until I was about 10, I believed that that was the "f-word" and I have a vague recollection of telling someone to "Furt off."

I used to believe that numbers all had personalities
1 was the King of the numbers
2 was his wife
3 and 4 were the little kids
5 and 6 were older kids
7, 8 and 9 were older meaner numbers. I lways crack up with that joke why is 6 afraid of 7?
Because 7,8,9 (seven ate nine) I can relate, all the numbers had personalities!

I used to believe that words that rhymed in English would rhyme in every other language as well. How else could a song be translated and still sound like a song, right?

I used to believe…

When I was in fourth grade, I became fascinated with the life of Helen Keller. I read every book I could find. I taught myself the alphabet and numbers in sign language. In 5th grade, our chorus director taught us a song in sign to sing and perform. It must have been around that time I realized some people do actually communicate this way. I believed that if I continued to learn more sign language, that I would have children who were deaf and would be able to hear me when I spoke to them. I stopped learning more about the language at that point.

I used to believe…

when i was 4 my 6 year old brother told me that sticking up the middle finger meant "im sorry"
later that day i was caught being naughty, so to make amends, i proudly flipped my mom the bird!

I used to believe…

When I was little, I did a lot of reading on my own. If I had read the word incorectly or pronounced it as it had looked, I became stuck with that word in my language. When I took my first human origins class in college, I asked my professor whether or not it was the "Oran-goo-tens" that made nests up in the trees....I was nineteen years old!!!

I used to think that "l-m-n-o-p" was one letter because of how fast it's said in the song. So when I said the alphabet and I got to "l", I said " lmnop, l, m, n...."

I used to believe…

There's a Peanuts movie called Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and Don't Come Back!) that I watched a lot when I was younger. At one part in the movie, Snoopy is driving a car and the car gets rear-ended. The drivers of the other cars start yelling at him, and as Marcie is saying stuff to them in French--as the characters were in France in this movie--Snoopy is making all sorts of hand gestures at them, including swiping under his chin. When I was a kid, I had no idea what that meant, and just thought he was being funny. I even did that to someone in fifth grade at lunch, and was surprised when he got all outraged and told the lunch lady what I'd done. Years later, I learned that what I'd done was the Italian equivalent of raising the middle finger. Whoops.

I used to believe…

My friend used to think that a 'gander' meant a group of geese, not a male goose. So, she thought the expression "What's good for the goose is good for the gander" meant "What's good for one is good for all!" Her version made perfect sense...it was just wrong! :)

I used to believe…

Whenever i would talk on the phone, i thought if you said a bad word, the telephone would beep it out, i was talking to my mom (i was only about 6) and i had said shit and i thought it had beeped it out, it did not......

I used to believe…

When I was in second or third grade, my parents were visiting a friend, and I got into a conversation with their boy, who was the same age as me, about rhymes. So we made up this game where we'd take a word, and then go through all the consonants of the alphabet, and determine whether or not there was such a word. One word that we decided to play with was 'luck'. We started through the alphabet saying, "There's such a word as 'buck', there's no such word as 'cuck', there's such a word as 'duck, there's no such word as 'fuck', there's no such word as 'guck', etc. Neither of us had never heard the word 'fuck' before, since our parents never used it. When we got to 'puck', we said there was no such word also, since neither or us had ever heard of hockey. We thought this little game was rather silly, so we kept it to ourselves because we didn't want our parents to think we were too silly. A year or two later, our family moved to California, and a new friend of mine introduced me to the word 'fuck', with fair warning that it was a nasty word. Shortly after that, I saw the word spray-painted on the side of a building, and I said, "That's a nasty word." I told my parents later on how I found out it was a nasty word.

I used to believe…

When I was in 7th grade I remember reading something or other on organisms with our Life Science, and this Special Ed. girl had just moved into it, and right in the middle of a paragraph she said, 'Most orgasms can move." boy...Mrs.Collins looked suprised at that one!

I used to believe…

When i was little, i used to wonder why people who spoke foreign languages had such weird accents.

i was like why dont they just speak with a "normal" accent, which was american for me. i wanted to see if i could make out some of the letters they were saying. i then found out that each language had its own accent and english style sounded not normal to a spanish speaker.

I once asked a classmate whose mother is Irish, "So, do you know how to speak Irish?".
She gave me a funny look & said, "They speak English".
Cripes! I had mixed up the Welsh & Irish!
That moment has always been one I wish had never happened.